An interesting blog on trips, technical articles and reviews
Archive for August, 2011
Paragliding
0Since my childhood, I always dreamt of flying like an eagle. Always wondered what it feels to fly so high above in the sky! I finally got an opportunity to go for Para gliding in Taiwan.
A group of 7 colleagues from CCMA at ITRI started our Para-gliding trip on Saturday: Aug 20 at 7:30 AM. Para gliding in Taiwan is quite popular and the nearest spot for people living in Hsinchu is at a place called Wan Li, which is at a 1 hr driving distance from Taipei.
https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=120523915902
We reached at 11 AM at Wan Li and were shocked to see a long queue of people waiting for their turn. The landscape view from the mountain at Wan Li was breathtaking.
In front lies the Pacific Ocean and to the sides are the beautiful gigantic mountains making the paragliding experience really memorable.
I never imagined I could fly above the ocean, mountains like a bird with my huge personality, but thanks to well-trained paragliding experts at Wan Li, I managed to do it!
It was a short ride lasting around 5 minutes and we all landed on the beach smoothly at the end. We then went to North Coast Scenic area in east coast of Taiwan to do snorkeling.
More photos at: http://dilip.nijagal.com/PhotoGallery/gallery3/index.php/Friends/Taiwan-Trip/2011-summer-trip/Paragliding
Syakaro Hiking
4Taiwan’s bio diversity is vast and its landscapes amaze me every time I visit Taiwan.
In my first visit I was taken aback by the view of gigantic mountains of Taroko Gorge in Hualien. I very much wanted to hike there, but couldn’t find a suitable group.
When I got another opportunity to visit Taiwan, I so desperately wanted to hike there, but in the nth moment I was informed that Hualien forest department requires a hiking permit 1 month in advance. Unfortunately, as an intern I do not have the luxury to plan in advance by a period of 1 month.
My quest to hike in Taiwan got a major boost when one of my colleagues Vis assured me that he would take me for a hike at least to some other good place in Taiwan. Since Taiwan has no dearth of dense forests, finding a hiking spot is no rocket science. Vis introduced me to another colleague at CCMA, Simon who is an avid outdoor activity enthusiast. It took him just a few minutes to come up with atleast 2-3 different hiking sports. Finally we settled with Syakaro, which is a supposed to be a difficult trail, and hence it won’t be crowded even on a weekend. It’s located to east of Hsinchu.
Coming from India, I have seen how a crowded place can put off my mood. Even in India, I always used to plan for toughest hiking spots to make sure I get away from crowd.
We managed to pull in 9 of our colleagues from CCMA to get going on the hiking adventure. So our trip members were: left to right: Simon, Alexey, Yi-Ling, Dilip, Vis, Oksana, Yi-Yang(Sam), Bonnie and Fanchy.
Simon had a car and Vis rented another 7 seater car(Wish).
We started the trip from ITRI at 7:30 AM on Saturday, Aug 13th 2011.
It took an hour of scenic drive to Neiwan and then another 2 hr journey to Syaroko trail entry point.
This trail has 2 end points. One can start from either end. But unfortunately it’s remotely located, so private transport is the only means. The road to entry points are also in very bad condition so be prepared for lots of muddy bumps.
We decided to start from Yaro entry point and go till Baishi suspension bridge and return to Yaro point again. The total length of the trip is 20 kms up and down.
There is a police check post around 10 mins drive before Yaro entry point where you need to get entry permit by providing some photo ID and there is no entry cost.
So we started to hike by 10:30 AM on a lovely cloudy Saturday morning with temperature around 26 degrees Celsius. It was a very pleasant weather.
After walking for 30 mins, we found a warning board which said trail is closed because of landslides.
But luckily we knew it beforehand because some helpful foreigner had blogged about this trail: http://hikingtaiwan.wordpress.com/2009/03/02/syaroko-historic-trail-%E9%9C%9E%E5%96%80%E7%BE%85%E5%8F%A4%E9%81%93/
So we took a deviation into the forest where a small trail can be found leading to uphill. It looked tough in beginning, but found regular trail marks ahead. We found several water falls, small suspension bridges, bamboo trees on the way. We had to take another similar deviation later, probably after 1 hour.
Wooden ladders
Bamboo trees
The deviations made the trip very adventurous because they were slippery (probably because of rain some days ago).
The gorgeous views of the mountain are available all through the trail. The forest is so dense with thick green cover and lots of insects. Am not sure about any wild animals, at least we didn’t find one on our trip!
Slippery trail
The magnificent view of clouds kissing the green cover is something very special.
The trail path is not an easy morning walk!. There were slippery rocks; thorny trees, small pebbles and roots of trees, which make one, topple over and then there were wooden logs supported on ropes. The ropes were tied to some tree and those logs formed a ladder and were the only hope to climb down some stretch of trail.
It was fun but a lot scary too! A slip will only lead you to hell!
After around 2 hrs of hike, we took a break to feast on some snakes and biscuits that we packed! 
View from Baishi bridge
Lunch break
Finally after 4-hour hike, we reached the Baishi suspension bridge. It’s a 145m long suspension bridge built by the Japanese across a very deep river valley. The view from the bridge was fantastic, no words to describe it. It’s easily the best scenic, suspension bridge I have every come across. The metallic ropes holding the bridge were rusted and I could only hope it doesn’t give up on me. We kept on admiring the natural beauty for around 30 mins and then started on our return journey.
The return journey took around 3 hours and we were so damn waiting to relax in the car. Wo-men chanda hen lei! (we all were really very tired). Yes I can remember and repeat Chinese!
Killer punch
Some people were so damn tired that their body parts were like dangling pointers. Any attempt to fix it were greeted with killer punches.
To summarize, it was an awesome hiking expedition and am glad I found a very friendly, enthusiastic group of colleagues to join me in the hiking adventure.